Facebook's Tough Choice In China: Censor Or Not?

Facebook's reported move to create tools to censor content on its site in China should come as no surprise. But is it paying too high a price for market entry to the world's largest mobile and Internet market?

Granted, other U.S. brands have done the same thing to get into the Chinese market. The most obvious example is Google, which was censoring search results in China for a decade before finally withdrawing from the market in 2010 to direct searches through Hong Kong instead.

The reason given at the time is that it was the right thing to do. See my Forbes post then, Why Google is Quitting China, outlining the scenario. But it also made sense because Google was losing out to local competitor Baidu in China, and never gained more than one-third of the market despite putting enormous resources behind it and improving its search results in the Mandarin language.

Will Facebook fare better against such entrenched rivals as Weibo and WeChat in China? People go to the sites where they can meet their friends, and most Chinese I know already have a large network on these local sites. These Chinese messaging brands also increasingly have audiences in the U.S. and other major markets.

Facebook will have to jump over rivals and build a network of regular users in China. So far, it's accessed mostly by English-speaking and expatriate users in the country. If Facebook does move ahead with a China entry plan, its attraction could be that Chinese users will get to mingle more with overseas pals. And, perhaps another lure will be access to more news content that is uncensored. The Facebook tool, which has been secret as it's been developed, apparently blocks news of political dissent and can target specific geographic areas.

Facebook's leader Mark Zuckerberg has made no secret of his desire to get Facebook unblocked in China. He's learned Mandarin, visited the country several times and met with its Internet leaders. Now he will have to decide whether to follow other American brand leaders in censoring content in China to get full access or simply wait it out and hope things change (unlikely).